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Boiled Salad Dressing

A thickened dressing made from butter, flour, sugar, vinegar, milk, eggs, mustard, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth, being careful not to brown.

  3. Stir in the milk and bring to a boil.

Finish and thicken

  1. Place the saucepan in another pan of hot water.

  2. Beat the eggs, salt, and mustard together.

  3. Add the vinegar and stir into the boiling mixture.

  4. Continue stirring until the dressing thickens.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set when gently heated, giving it body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk base into a smooth, stable starting sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the base.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce and adds creaminess.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that defines a salad dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the hot base. Eggs thicken when heated but scramble if they get too hot too fast. Using a hot water bath and constant stirring keeps the proteins setting smoothly rather than curdling.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, vinegar, milk, egg):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, vinegar, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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